NASA's first spacecraft
built to explore the deep interior of another world streaked
toward a landing scheduled for Monday on a vast, barren plain on
Mars, carrying instruments to detect planetary heat and seismic
rumblings never measured anywhere but Earth.

After sailing 301 million miles (548 million km) on a
six-month voyage through deep space, the robotic lander InSight
was due to touch down on the dusty, rock-strewn surface of the
Red Planet at about 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT).

The mission control team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL) near Los Angeles conducted a final adjustment to the
InSight's flight path on Sunday to steer the spacecraft closer
to its target arrival point over Mars.

"We're going to be on pins and needles," NASA Administrator
Jim Bridenstine told Reuters in Pasadena. "We are going to be
crossing our fingers, doing everything we can to make sure that
this is a successful landing."

If all goes according to plan, InSight will hurtle through
the top of the thin Martian atmosphere at 12,300 miles (19,795
km) per hour. Slowed by friction, deployment of a supersonic
parachute and the firing of retro rockets, InSight will descend
77 miles through pink Martian skies to the surface in 6-1/2
minutes.

The stationary probe, launched in May from California, will
then pause for 16 minutes for the dust to settle, literally,
around its landing site, before disc-shaped solar panels are
unfurled like wings to provide power to the spacecraft.

Engineers at JPL hope to receive real-time confirmation of
the craft's arrival from data relayed by a pair of miniature
satellites that were launched along with InSight and will be
flying past Mars.

The JPL controllers also expect to receive a photograph of
the probe's new surroundings on the flat, smooth Martian plain
close to the planet's equator called the Elysium Planitia.

The site is roughly 373 miles from the 2012 landing spot of
the car-sized Mars rover Curiosity, the last spacecraft sent to
the Red Planet by NASA.

The smaller, 880-pound (360 kg) InSight - its name is short
for Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy
and Heat Transport - marks the 21st U.S.-launched Mars mission,
dating back to the Mariner fly-bys of the 1960s. Nearly two
dozen other Mars missions have been sent from other nations.

InSight will spend 24 months - about one Martian year -
using seismic monitoring and underground temperature readings to
unlock mysteries about how Mars formed and, by extension, the
origins of the Earth and other rocky planets of the inner solar
system.

While Earth's tectonics and other forces have erased most
evidence of its early history, much of Mars - about one-third
the size of Earth - is believed to have remained largely static,
creating a geologic time machine for scientists.

InSight's primary instrument is a French-built seismometer,
designed to record the slightest vibrations from "marsquakes"
and meteor impacts around the planet. The device, to be placed
on the surface by the lander's robot arm, is so sensitive it can
measure a seismic wave just one half the radius of a hydrogen
atom.

Scientists expect to see a dozen to 100 marsquakes during
the mission, producing data to help them deduce the depth,
density and composition of the planet's core, the rocky mantle
surrounding it, and the outermost layer, the crust.

The NASA Viking probes of the mid-1970s were equipped with
seismometers, too, but they were bolted to the top of the
landers, a design that proved largely ineffective.

Apollo missions to the moon brought seismometers to the
lunar surface as well. But InSight is expected to yield the
first meaningful data on planetary seismic tremors beyond Earth.

A second instrument, furnished by Germany's space agency,
consists of a drill to burrow as much as 16 feet (5 meters)
underground, pulling behind it a rope-like thermal probe to
measure heat flowing from inside the planet.

Meanwhile, a radio transmitter will send back signals
tracking Mars' subtle rotational wobble to reveal the size of
the planet's core and possibly whether it remains molten.

NASA officials say it will take two to three months for the
main instruments to be deployed and put into operation.
(Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Pasadena; Additional
reporting by Pavithra George in Pasadena
Editing by Michael Perry and Tom Brown)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)